


Cold Storage

by oreopizza47



Series: Untitled Fallout Fic [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25770514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oreopizza47/pseuds/oreopizza47
Summary: Nate wakes up alone, with no memory of how he came to be in a vault, and some suspicious gaps in his memory.
Series: Untitled Fallout Fic [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1869493
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Cold Storage

He awoke to bitter cold and blaring sirens.  
  
"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All vault residents must vacate immediately."  
  
The pod door opened with a hiss, and he slipped to his knees, limply catching himself on his forearms before his head could hit concrete.  
  
"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All vault residents must vacate immediately."  
  
He didn't like the sound of that. Cryogenic... Freezing people? A glance around the room revealed a dozen pods much like the one he had fallen from, all coated in a thin layer of ice.  
  
"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All vault residents must vacate immediately."  
  
Critical failure. That sounded important. Likely means one of two things. Either the whole thing was going to blow, which could result in either a massive fireball or flash freezing. Or the system was unregulated somehow, which could cut off life support and fully freeze anyone still sealed into a pod.  
  
He climbed to his feet, unsteady, pulling himself up the side of his pod. A few faltering steps took him to the adjacent pod, and he peered into the viewport. The glass pane was frosted with ice, but a human form could be made out inside, motionless. Were they breathing?  
  
He rubbed at the glass, trying to wipe away the icy fog and get a better view. After a moment, the view was clear enough for making out details, but the quiet dread became a moderate-volume panic when he realized that they were not breathing, and in fact, they were frozen completely solid.  
  
He stumbled back with a cry, and felt his legs go out from under him, leaving him to crash to the floor a second time since gaining consciousness. Once again he managed to get his arms under him enough to avoid serious damage to his head, and he scurried away from the pod in a frantic crabwalk on elbows and heels. His eyes darted all over the room. Why weren't any other pods sliding open? Was everyone else in this place dead? How had he gotten so lucky as to make it out?  
  
Through the haze of anxiety, he noticed a blinking terminal in one corner of the room. A thick metal cable ran from the back of the terminal up to the ceiling, and out to the middle of the hallway, where thinner tubes branched out from the main supply to snake behind each pod. So the terminal was probably able to send commands to every piece of hardware in the room. Maybe there'd be an explanation to be found on it.  
  
A few deep breaths later, and he was ready to try his legs out again. Feeling slightly less wobbly, he managed to get up without assistance, and gingerly made his way to the terminal.  
  
Bright green letters blinked on the screen, reading "Welcome to ROBCO Industries (TM) Termlink. Thank you for choosing Vault-Tec." Below, several entries invited further attention. He clicked into each in turn, panic mounting in him once again, mingled with confusion.  
  
"Cryogenic Array: Offline."  
"Life Support: Offline."  
"Pod B1: Occupant Deceased."  
"Pod B2: Occupant Deceased."  
  
The list went on, every listed pod containing a dead body, except for the one he had been in.  
  
"Occupant status: Unknown. -- Pod Door Manual Override Engaged/Remote Override Engaged."  
  
Override? Someone let him out?  
  
He stepped back from the terminal, got eyes on the door, and walked out of the room as fast as his legs would carry him.  
  
Doors hissed open in front of him and sealed again behind him, one after another, but he kept moving forward. Had to get away from that room. Couldn't stand to be around so many dead.  
  
Eventually he slowed as he noticed the path forward curving ahead of him. Down the hall, he could see another hallway running perpendicular. He turned around to see the way he came, but found himself face to face with a solid steel door. He stepped up to it, placed a hand on it. It didn't open. One way?  
  
Too many questions with no answers. He needed to slow down and take stock. Where was he, and what was going on? Who was he, for that matter? His memory was hazy.  
  
A name, to start. Nate. History? Military. Third generation. Everything else was patchy. No memory of a home, or anything specific about his family. Did he have any? A blurry image of a woman shimmered in his mind, but he couldn't make out the details, or recall a name. Who was she? Who was she to him? No time right now. What else could he remember?  
  
He looked down at himself. He was wearing a form-fitting blue jumpsuit, with gold-colored trim. It looked brand new. How long had he been in suspension? No way to be sure. He couldn't remember a date. Couldn't remember what he had done last, before ending up here. Couldn't remember where the suit came from.  
  
Focus! Right now, he could only focus on what he could remember. He could pick up the pieces later. Name, Nate. Background, military, active duty. Middling ranks in strength and perception aptitude, but good marks on endurance and agility courses. "Smart cookie, and pretty to boot," rang a voice in his mind that he knew wasn't his own. Who? No, focus up. Another time.  
  
He remembered a war. Combat. Against... The Chinese? And the war reaching a stalemate in China at some point. After... After Anchorage, right. Momentum carrying the fight on, despite thousands dead. He had gotten out for... Some reason. Damn. More blanks.  
  
"Critical failure in Cryogenic Array. All vault residents must vacate immediately."  
  
Right, the alarm. He'd been distracted, forgot about it. Vault residents... Vault... Vault-Tec? They had been making bunkers, with widespread public support. Was he in one of them? Had something happened? The war went sour maybe, momentum dried up after the push into the Chinese mainland. He needed to keep moving, find more information.  
  
He took off down the hall at a jog, feeling much steadier on his feet. Almost a casual motion, barring the incredible circumstances, the jogging felt well practiced. Coming to the intersection, he saw a door blocking the path to the right, an open path to the left, and felt more than he heard the sealing of the steel door behind him. Alright. Only one way to go.  
  
After a few moments, an open door caught his attention. The room held a series of filling cabinets, a couple tall standing lockers, and a plain office desk, lacking ornamentation. Atop the desk was another terminal, as well as a large metal bracelet covered in snaking wires. Oh, a Pip-Boy, right. Personal computing at your fingertips. Couldn't hurt to grab for now. Might give some more information if he flipped through the files.  
  
Terminal first though. It sat unlocked, like the one back in the cryo chamber. A notice at the top informed him that it was logged on with security team level clearance. The top option on the terminal was security instructions for the vault. He opened the file.  
  
“Vault 111 is designed to test the long-term effects of suspended animation on unaware, human subjects. Security staff are responsible for maintaining installation integrity and monitoring science staff activity.”  
  
What the hell? Unaware? What kind of sick experiment...  
  
He flicked through a handful of other files, eyes landing on more informational tidbits that painted a startling picture.  
  
"Life-saving intervention is only permitted if greater than 80% of the resident population has perished..."  
"Residents are not to be disrupted or evacuated. Vault-Tec will attend to their needs remotely..."  
"... may elect to evacuate staff after a mandatory shelter period of 180 days..."  
  
Jesus. It wasn't even meant to be a proper shelter. He found the personal logs of the security officer in another directory and opened the first one.  
  
"October 23, 2077  
God. It finally happened. The world's over. Barely got all the residents inside. Not everyone made it..."  
  
The air rushed out of him in a gasping sigh. He lost track of how many times he reread those words. The world's over... Nuclear annihilation. That's all it could mean. The Chinese were backed against a wall, no options after being crushed at Anchorage. So they did the unthinkable. Mutually assured destruction. If we go down, so do you. The US had suspected, but everyone knew that a full nuclear offensive just couldn't be stopped if it started. Too many variables, too many entry points, too many potential threats. The only retaliation available was... Well, they don't call it mutually assured for nothing.  
  
He copied the files onto the Pip-Boy. He didn't want to forget that date. He had to get out and figure out how long it had been. The entries only went another year or so. He stepped out of the security office, dazed, but he forced himself to focus. Assess the situation. No way to know how long he was suspended, but someone had to have let him out. That means people were around, alive. Maybe in other vaults, maybe even outside.  
  
That was encouraging. With renewed energy, he jogged down the hall, doors sealing behind him as he went. Eventually, he slowed to a halt in a large receiving area, the huge steel door standing open in front of him. But he didn't see that right away. First, he saw the bodies.  
  
Half a dozen skeletons lay strewn around the floor. Some wore tattered lab coats, others in faded security gear, but all completely decomposed, not a scrap of flesh or smell of death left behind. That... That didn't happen quickly. In a sealed environment like this, it took probably a year or two for the bodies to completely decompose. Technically, the bones would eventually go too, but with no exposure to the elements, that could take anywhere from a few decades to... Hmm. The oldest skeleton on record was millions of years old, but he wasn't sure of the details. But he'd seen his share of bodies, new and old, in tombs, mass graves, and strewn across battlefields.  
  
Among the dead, however, was a sight he was not prepared for. It looked to be a cockroach of some kind... Except it was the size of a small dog. And it wasn't alone. Scattered around, three or four of the things could be seen. Or at least, enough parts and pieces to construct three or four of them, with enough glue and imagination. All dead, in various states of mangled, the blood and chitin long since dried out.  
  
Still. He didn't like that. People, he could work with. Maybe a rabid dog. But massive bugs? That was... Unpleasant to think about. And it raised a lot of really big questions about what happened in the aftermath of nuclear devastation.  
  
A security baton rested on the ground under one of the bodies, along with a 10mm pistol. Security staff then. A full magazine remained in the gun. So no shots fired on any of these bodies. None on the bugs either. That narrowed things down. Either the bugs came long after the bodies, or the bugs were so fast and deadly that they had finished the people off before anyone could retaliate. He hoped it wasn't the second option.  
  
He cataloged the weapons into the Pip-Boy, and clipped it to his arm. Clearly whoever had left it on the desk was not going to be missing it at this point. No time to explore additional functionality right now though, past the catalog screen. He couldn't put off going outside. Based on the terminal entries, long term survival was not intended in this vault. There was likely no food or water for him to survive on. In fact, that's probably what killed the staff. Must've fought each other at the door, weak with hunger, and all died trying. Overexerted, dehydrated, malnourished. Wasted away. He wondered idly if anyone had stockpiled enough supplies to make it out.  
  
Finally he lifted his gaze to the door. A massive slab of steel, cut into the shape of a cog, emblazoned with the numbers 111, stood next to an equally massive and cog-shaped hole in the steel wall. A thin walkway extended from the receiving area to the door, with spotlights lighting the path. At least he wouldn't have to puzzle out how to open it. For a moment he paused, wondering if the procession of open doors since he woke up were some kind of sign, but he abandoned that line of thinking. True, he wanted to investigate the circumstances of his entry to the vault, but first he needed to see what he was working with. What was left of the world. So he made his way down the walkway, listening to his footsteps echo on the metal, until he reached the elevator that would lead him outside.  
  
He took a deep breath and looked back one more time. For once, the door didn't seal shut behind him. But it didn't matter. He didn't think there was anything to come back to.  
  
He stepped into the elevator, and braced himself for the devastation surely waiting above.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Fallout fic currently being written by my lovely wife, but I won't be more specific until such a time as she decides to post any of her fic somewhere so I can link it. Don't want to spoil anything for her. Suffice to say I'm hoping that my Nate can fit into her world, though I can't promise perfect continuity, as we're both basing much of our writing on our playthroughs, and there's only so much we can do to avoid doing similar quests.


End file.
